Five minutes with Choosic’s Project Manager Alessia Sannazzaro

In an increasingly saturated tech market, Choosic is one app which successfully stands out of the crowd, courtesy of an original concept, great usability and cool design.Having recently taken an in-depth look at Choosic’s unique take on music discovery here, I’ve now also had the opportunity to chat with Alessia Sannazzaro, Choosic’s project manager.

Photography By Marta Sputo

Hi Alessia, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. First of all, can you tell us a bit about your role at Choosic?

I’ve always been interested in innovation and creativity. I graduated from a combined course between Queen Mary and Goldsmiths University studying Product Design. After graduating, I freelanced as a graphic designer until Choosic swept me off my feet.

I guess my official title at Choosic is ‘Project Manager’ but the truth is, being part of a start up forces you to take on different roles and develop different skills, often outside your comfort zone. I currently manage everything that has to do with the product, from developers to QA testing to marketing. I also help with the business development and financial projection and plans.

Who are the other people behind Choosic?

There are currently 5 people in the team. Chris Underdown is the initial founder of Choosic and the one who came up with the idea. But an idea does not build itself. George Cossins and Rob Cross are our software engineers and Adam Radestock is our iOS developer. Together we form the Choosic team.

How did the idea for Choosic come about?

The ethos has always been to help new artists get discovered. We originally started as a YouTube channel, filming artists around London and promoting them on the Internet. We then realised that there was a massive demand from people wanting to discover new music, and decided to create an app to address this.

Choosic has been described as Tinder for music. Do you feel the comparison is warranted? Was Tinder in fact an inspiration at all at development stage?

We want the discovery on Choosic to be as fast and easy as possible, as well as being content focused. We played around with different layouts and agreed that the swiping feature was the one which fit the criteria. The “Tinder for music” title was actually given to us by the media and articles as it is the easiest way to describe our product, and people just get it.

How has the response to the app been so far?

The reaction is great! The past couple of months have been an amazing journey as we grew to 27,000 users in over 100 countries. We are proud of what we have achieved so far, but there is so much more we want to do and this is just the beginning.

At the moment Choosic is only available on the app store. Do you plan to issue an android version anytime soon?

Android is live!We launched the Android app last week seeing all the demand for it. It currently has some more features compared to the iOS app as you can create custom playlists from the songs you’ve liked. The update is coming to iOS soon, so don’t you worry Apple folks.

I’ve noticed that Choosic is heavily biased towards independent music and lesser known artists. Is this intentional?

Yes. We always aim to push the newest talent forward. We want people to discover new artists and tracks, not to listen to another Rihanna song. Making the discovery of new music an easy and pleasant experience is our main focus. I tried converting a Choosic playlist to Spotify recently and only 50% of the songs were actually available on Spotify.

What’s next for Choosic?

We want to keep improving the product and to keep users and musicians happy. We are also looking for our first seed investment to bring the company to the next level and grow even faster.

Anything else you would like to add?

If you have any suggestion on how we can improve Choosic let us know at social@choosic.co.uk. We love hearing what our users think about our app.